RELATED APPLICATIONS
There are no applications related hereto heretofore filed in this or any foreign country.
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to protective devices that provide secret data entry for key pad matricies, and more particularly to a shielded interface that secrets the sequential operation of three key pad keys.
2. Description of Prior Art
Matrix type pressure operated key pads have become increasingly used in business transactions of various sorts such as in automatic teller machines (ATM's) and touch tone telephones. Often operation of such devices is carried out in public places, especially in the case of personal business transactions, where the operation may be observed by third party bystanders. The potentiality for fraud and dishonesty that may produce illegally begotten gains by such bystanders and losses by the key pad operators are always present, and personal safety may even be breached where information for key pad data entry is made available. An increase in fraudulent and other illegal activity has kept pace in rather direct proportion to the increased use of key pad operated devices in publicly accessible places for either business or personal transactions. This increase has become so marked and well known that significant numbers of knowledgeable people are afraid to use, or avoid use of, publicly available key pads and the operatively associated facilities for both business and personal transactions. The instant invention provides an interfacing device with a shielding cover between a user of a publicly available key pad and the key pad to allow operation of a key or of key sequences that are not visually determinable by an observer.
The problem of key pad privacy and security has heretofore been recognized and various particularized solutions have been proposed for its resolution. A first class of devices for this purpose has provided some type of visual barrier or shield to prevent, or at least lessen, the potential of third party observation of keyboard use. Such devices have provided direct digital input into the key pad by a user without any interfacing mechanism between the user and the keys of the key pad. A second class of devices has provided some mechanism interfacing between a user and a key pad that prevents third party knowledge of key operation from observation of manipulation of the interfacing mechanism, somewhat in the nature of a simplistic encoder. The instant invention provides a new, novel and improved member of this second class of device.
The first class of key pad security devices is distinguishable from the instant device, and other members of the second class of devices generally, by reason of essential structural differences that beget different functions and limit uses. With first class devices that provide visual shields associated with an entire key pad operated device, an operator or the environment about either generally must be quite large to define a volume large enough to enclose a user, the particular key pad associated machine or both. In many applications, if not most, these shields because of their size are not practically usable or economically viable for security purposes. Various members of this type of device such as a telephone booth or ATM kiosk not only are large, but also commonly do not completely shield key pad use from ingenuous or ambitious third parties.
Smaller shields of the first class may be carried in immediate proximity to the a pad or by a user's hands or arms. These devices share the problem of not preventing visual access of third parties from all positions and of inconvenience of use which varies somewhat in direct proportion to the degree of security provided by the shielding device.
Visual shields of the first class have not come into common use for security purposes in the present day marketplace, though many such devices have become known and used, especially for particular purposes. All of the first class of visual shielding devices are distinguishable from the instant mechanism by reason of their lack of provision for complete visual security for key pad operation without encumbrance of the ordinary operation of pad keys.
Devices of the second class that provide interfacing mechanisms between a user and a key pad, though known, are not so commonly used as are shielding devices of the first class. Most interfacing devices of the second class have had some other purpose, either primary or secondary, than concealing or attempting to conceal data entry into a key pad and by reason of the structures and functions required by this other purpose such devices generally have not been either practically feasible or economically viable to provide concealed, private data entry. Various of such interface devices have been developed since the advent of the matrix type touch tone telephone key pad and most commonly these devices have provided means to enlarge the operative surface of keys, to make the indicia carried by keys more readily visible, to make key operation more accurate and certain, to provide a memory of historical key operation, to provide better and more certain access to keys, or the like. This type of second class devices has generally provided only structures that are especially adapted for their particular purposes and those structures generally have not concealed input data or key pad operation, but rather, if anything, have made the use of the key pad more obvious to a third party observer. This type of device is readily distinguishable on this basis from the instant encoder type cover that provides no visual information of key pad operation.
Some few interface devices of the second class have provided a combined function of aiding keyboard operation and secreting or encoding data entry, and in the recent past devices to provide secrecy of key pad operational data by encoding or otherwise, without any other secondary purpose, have been developed. The second class devices having dual purposes in general have been more complex and cumbersome of operation than a device providing only a security function and consequently have been more difficult of understanding and operation by a user and more expensive of manufacture by providing mechanism to accomplish two different functions. These latter devices are distinguished on this basis from the instant security cover which provides only the single function of secrecy of data entry, with any other potential secondary benefits being only accidentally coincidental.
Known interface devices having the only purpose of maintaining secrecy of the operation of a key pad generally have had complex electrical, mechanical or electromechanical mechanisms interfacing between their own data entry system and a key pad to be operated to make such devices complex, difficult of understanding and operation and costly of manufacture. Such devices generally have programmed the entry of all of the digits of a multi-digit number to be entered into a key pad, which often extend to ten or twelve digits or more, and in general have required pre-programming by a user in some private fashion or place, often distant from the point of use, to maintain secrecy, with the device merely being applied to a key pad and activated to function automatically at the place of use.
In contradistinction to this type of secrecy device, the instant cover provides secrecy for only three sequential key operations in any single operational sequence of entering a number of more than three digits into a key pad and allows operation to program the device with the three secret digits in a public place and at the point and time of use. The programming operation may be easily secreted from an observer and, if it were observed, it would not provide knowledge of the key pad keys to be operated by a particular programmed state because the cover orientation on a key pad is determinative of the results of its operation. The operation of the instant cover is entirely mechanical and accomplished by simple structures to provide easy understandability and simple operation for a user, while maintaining low costs, reliability and long life with no maintenance cost for an expendable powering source such as a battery.
My invention lies not in any one of these features individually, but rather in the synergistic combination of all of its structures that necessarily give rise to the functions flowing therefrom as herein specified and claimed.